Hiring Managers! Do You Know What You Want?

Feb 4

ToddArticle , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , No Comments

99% of you do not know what you’re looking for, what you want, or the specific needs of your company when it comes to web design or development. That may sound harsh, it may be a high number, agree or disagree if you will. Many have no background in web design or development. All they know how to do is print, turn the computer on, work a mouse, and use Microsoft Office Suite programs like a skilled assassin.

AJAX Methodologies are the same as writing down DHTML/HTML/XHTML/CSS/Javascript in your job adverts. DHTML is NOT a language… let get that straight, first off. Many think it is an off-shoot of HTML. Wrong. DHTML, is a collection of technologies used together to create interactive and animated web sites by using a combination of a static markup language (such as HTML), a client-side scripting language (such as JavaScript), a presentation definition language (such as CSS), and the Document Object Model. So says Wikipedia. Please know the difference.

Please know the difference too with Java and Javascript. There IS a difference.Java is a programming language developed by Sun Microsystems and is a integral part of their Java platform. JavaScript was influenced by many languages and was designed to look like Java, but to be easier for non-programmers to work with. Javascript is a dialect of ECMAScript. Programmers use both, but they are in separate classes by themselves. Please know the difference.

HTML/XHTML, yes, there are subtle differences, please know them. There is also HTML 4 & HTML 5, XHTML Strict and Transitional (among others), 1.0 & 1.1, even 2.0 which is dead in the water at this time. Tags close differently in XHTML than HTML. Please understand that difference.

PHP & MySQL is NOT a front-end language. It does help for a front-end developer to know some, but it is not crucial that they know JOINs & SELECTs, they should know a little OOP, but it’s not vital that they understand polymorphism or mysql scalability by heart.

It DOES help if someone knows the basics of the terminal or CVS/Subversion.

A CMS (Content Management System) is a great way to fix your cluttered site and trim those huge, hand-coded pages down. Do your homework when searching for a CMS, make sure your needs are addressed and that CMS can match your needs with solutions for those needs. WordPress is great for smaller sites, maybe it is great for your huge company sites, Drupal is another which I find better for larger sites with hundreds or thousands of pages of information.

CSS 2.1 is still widely used, CSS 3 brings us on the threshold of something wonderful in the world of front-end development. Mixed in with HTML 5, it’s going to be a beautiful thing. Please understand the difference when your developer or designer is using (and I do hope they are using) !DOCTYPE. Strict is fine, Transitional is also, use one, stick with one, please don’t use more than one on your site like I have seen before. and please hiring managers… make sure your business understands where the web is headed.

There are many people out there that are trying to steer people the right way and make the web a beautiful place for all of us that use this medium to not only browse, but communicate and share experiences. Don’t shut out users because your company uses a PC and that’s all you develop in, understand there are cross-platform issues and there are cross-browser issues as well. There is more than one browser out on the market today, understand that as well please. Just because Internet Explorer 6 is installed on your machine, doesn’t make it the only browser in existence.

Companies, please make sure your HR or hiring manager knows the differences when it comes to not only front-end design and development, but back-end development as well. This will only make things smoother for your company and your turnover rate, if it is unusually high, will only shrink because your people are in the know.

SEO is a myth. It’s a bunch of snake-oil salespeople trying to make a quick thousand bucks off of you & your company. SEO is not just tags and placing hundreds of words between your <head> tags and hundreds of other useless meta tags or ancient meta tags they use with their version of Adobe PageMill, it’s also about how you use your markup & structure. If you want to waste money spending $4,000/month on some “SEO Expert” that just places tags in the head of your documents and then call it a day, you’re getting fleeced. 75% of the designers and developers out there that know what they are doing and that have the experience should know a lot of SEO and that the search engines that matter, don’t blacklist your site because of the program you’re using because Snidely Whiplash, the SEO expert told you to bomb the heck out of the search engines each month.

Hiring managers should know what the company needs. Not just a bunch of resumes and then going through to see which one has the longest list of expertise. I’d prefer the guy that has 3 years experience with web standards and the matching skills to amange my web department rather than the guy that has 10 years coding expertise and can code PHP/MySQL/Ruby in his sleep, yet he still delivers Dreamweaver templates from the design he downloaded from Free Web Templates and they’re laden with inline tables, scripting, styling and hundreds of lines of commenting.

Web Design Courses and Dreamweaver

Feb 4

ToddArticle , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

The local college and the local school that offers college courses offers web design as a course. Both these courses use Dreamweaver as the aid for students to help them in their learning. The only thing I have a gripe with is that the local courses for college credits list Dreamweaver as

the industry standard.

If you’re reading this article, I would like to hear your input. Do you think this is so? Is Dreamweaver the “industry standard” and if not, what are your thoughts? What would your “standard” be? What do you use in your aid and if you were the instructor, what would you use as your aid to help students learn web design?

More

Dear New Hampshire,

Feb 4

ToddArticle , , , , , , , , , , No Comments

As a whole, I’ve seen better garbage in a landfill. The state of this states’ websites in dreadful. Save for a few that have jumped into the 21st century, the internet nightmares that exist that come from this state are awful.

Even the New Hampshire Official State website, is an abomination. A table-filled, inaccessible (even though they have an accessibility policy online), usability nightmare. I’m glad to see that the State like to remain in the Dark Ages of the web and use tables for layouts and HTML 4.01 as their preferred DOCTYPE. Well, that’s when the “webmasters” decide to use a DOCTYPE, which is about a ratio of 1:3 while perusing the state websites and their hideous offspring.

The old nheconomy website… A thing of precision and excellence. Now, plastered with ads, it looks like a fucked up version of Facebook. I like the look and feel of this page that I clicked the giant image at the bottom of the main page, but when I looked at the code, I figured it was time for a breath of fresh air.

No DOCTYPE and whomever did it, uses Dreamweaver for evil means. At least it is nice to know with this page, that someone remembers how to center table for layout, even though it’s so much easier to do it with a div-based layout and CSS. Tables are not for layouts, but they are for lazy hobbyist web designers and “webmasters” as well as shoddily-developed CMS’s.

If I were the state, I’d add a job opportunity in their listing for someone with web design knowledge.

Same company pumped out this gem. Apparently they love the usage of _blank on every external link and standards don’t matter when you’re smart and use .aspx pages.

The NH Campgrounds & RV Parks site looks like that game I used to play on my C64 back in the 80’s… what was that called? Ah yes, Operation WOLF. The “Site by: TRANCER” link doesn’t work, so perhaps that person is now in another field? Sandwich Artist? Lead Bagger? Cart Shagger?

http://www.theunionleader.com/. One of the ugliest online newspapers in the country. Bar none.

These folks at this “firm” felt the need to slap Flash into an HTML site that really did not need it. Nothing a Javascript slideshow (done right) would of taken care of. But, what do you expect from the kind that places a crushed image of Dane Cook on a stadium website? it doesn’t look like Dane Cook, it looks more like Robert Blake. I don’t want to go see Robert Blake in concert, I might get shot.

This one looks pretty but under the hood, it’s not only a usability and accessibility nightmare, it’s just chock full of errors. And tables. And shim gifs. And no alt tags for images, whether empty or not. I hope the people at web-sites.com know that you can shut off the border on an image in the CSS.

This kind of site wants to make me drink more.

Close, but no cigar.

There is so much wrong with this website that they went on Craigslist looking for a student intern to do the editing for the website.

If you are interested in working 5-10 hours or more per week in our Vermont office and/or from home, have your own laptop computer with Frontpage or Dreamweaver and Photoshop, and are looking to infuse your creative energies into our website while gaining valuable real-world experience, please contact us!

Yes. Because we all know 21st century web developers and programmers use FrontPage. *vomit*

Closer look at it revealed not only so many errors, but that the evil use of Dreamweaver was by Satan himself.

Someone took advantage of these folks and probably over charged them for a WordPress install and generic template you can find on about 40 million WordPress theme sites.

Did I run into the new Facebook again?

The ONLY site in this state that even remotely impressed me was this gem. Shocked and in total disbelief that something like that could be done in this state, When I looked under the hood, it was like bringing that girl home you met that is beautiful and dressed like a model, then you get intimate and suddenly it all falls apart from there. Once again, no DOCTYPE, tags out of place and and hoard of scripts and inline Javascript and more tags out of place. Now after all the fodder I have stumbled upon in the past few weeks like;

northconway.com
northconwaynh.com
mtwashingtonvalley.org
or angelfire.com/super/badwebs
facebook.com
myspace.com
areaguidenewhamsphire.com
nhpr.org

SkiNH had me at “hello.” Then we got close, then I went for the validate button. I feel dirty.

Wow… and just when things seemed to be at their worst, someone, some lost soul invented the target=_new in an a href. that is truly, not only monumental, but clearly ground-breaking.

No wonder the web is in a state of discord… the state of the web in ‘08 was that of change, now it looks like everyone is hiring that $7/hour web “master” or “mistress” to WYSIWYG the shit out of their websites.

Let’s at least clean the shit up on the web in this state, shall we? let’s at least have a little “web dignity” as I like to call it.

and just to show I am not biased just to the ridiculously crappy sites and sites in this state, I offer you this beauty of a site that pleases the eye and is slicker than shit rolling downhill in August. Inline Javascript (I call it the ‘Javascript monster and it shits all over the inside of the source code) and my pet peeve: NO DOCTYPE.

I’ll definitely be working on the “Website Nightmares” part of the program very, very soon.